This thread is intended to discuss the awesomeness that is The Deadmines and why TBC could really use some more pirates. Or more abstractly, what can be taken away from the most successful dungeon in an mmo ever when looking to expand upon said successful MMO.

Let's start things off with a simple walk through, in case anyone has missed the deadmines. If you don't feel the need to read through this, feel free to skip down to the **.

** Start Rambling Walkthrough**

The deadmines is a level 20ish 5 man instance at the end of the main line human quest series that deal with the defias. It's located in westfall and has multiple quest tie ins from both stormwind, and westfall. The zone contains a pre-instance trash section, which also has relevant quests from stormwind and westfall, and that pre-instance trash section even has a "hostile" town which shows on the map and even gets a mini-map "pointer" arrow if you run by it. That town, Moonbrooke, features in at least 2 quests both before and after the relevant deadmines section, so it's well known by any player attempting any significance portion of duskwood, westfall, or even just stopping in stormwind long enough to turn in a quest or two.

The deadmines is a linear dungeon, although the entirety of the dungeon doesn't vary much more than 4 levels. The first clear to a boss is composed of more of the same mobs you have already seen from outside the instance (which you presumably killed while questing earlier). The trash starts with simple single pulls, and builds up slowly as you move further.

The first boss has a door behind him, and is very obviously a 'special' encounter as you have _never_ seen an ogre up until that point on the main line human chains. The boss has a pair of extra mobs, which you've already learned are cc'able from the previous clear. When you go through the door beyond the first boss, you run into single pulls (again) of a new mob type, with plenty of room to run around should you need to. You'll need to, as you will likely (On your first run ever) have a patrol show up from behind while you're still wondering what to do with the items from the ogre.

The following trash is more of the same, and then we find another door. Opening the door we see goblins! All of them with large axes, chopping away, and we can hear a largish sounding mechanical saw. The goblins are relatively straightforward, and during the time in which it takes to clear them away we will certainly notice the giant patrolling shredder on our left. It patrols across the entire field of view from the door, and it's 5 times the size of the other goblins. Also, it's the subject of a quest.

Boss 2 is relatively straightforward - he starts almost identically to boss one, although he looks very different. The changes are: he patrols, and when you kill him the goblin hops out to do battle. (The first 2 stage boss fight in wow. Sneed jumping out of his wrecked shredder to punch you.) Doorway music I wonder what's behind this?

Oh. A giant foundry, lava pouring down, a ledge to look down, and...more goblins! Neatly visible from our vantage point? ANOTHER DOOR! Huzzah. It must be ours! A more subtle touch: the entire clear down to boss 3 is downhill, which is incredibly forgiving to line of sight, which in turn makes the new mobs easier as they have relevant ranged attacks and may need to be pulled back up. Mobs are once again introduced in the "one new guy, one new guy, two new guys" pattern, and they are visually distinctive. Some goblins have a torch and a flame attack, others have a gun and summon mechanical (that you've also already seen in westfall).

The boss himself is in the midst of the other workers, and has both a distinctive look (Larger, different outfit) but is also right in front of another door. Kill the boss, door opens - or at least that's been the case so far. This boss doesn't have anything particularly difficult about him - aside from the density of the mobs leading up to him. The lesson from this room is "pulling". The next passage way is more of the same miners we've come to expect, but more densely packed. The tunnel ends in, you guessed it, a door. This door is locked, but as per the formula, the solution rests squarely in front of it (A cannon). Alternatively, you could have a rogue open it. So the scouring of the dungeon goes on and you find the powder - light the fuse, and boom. Door open.

At this point you have a loud voice - "Check that out" and text "Mr.Smite yells: <blah>" that both indicate who the next target of choice is. The pirates (the new mob for this section) rush at you in twos, and you go from there. Note that even here the first pull is 2 of the same pirate, and then you get different pirates in a measured well paced order until you arrive at smite. Of course, you could also jump off the bridge and go swimming - but almost noone does. The bridge is a straight line to the boss. Admittedly, there are some ninja's hiding at the base of the ramp. Stay on your toes, lubber.

Mr Smite himself is an excellent follow up to sneed - his first form is very dull, similar to the ogre boss. He then stomps the ground (stunning you) and gives an emote (letting you know what happened and what he's going to do) and then goes to get a weapon, out of a chest (usually running away from the group enough that the group can react). More damage out of him now, and then he does the same thing again - with a different emote and a different weapon. Then you kill him and he drops something that isn't smite's mighty hammer (or that might just be my experience).

Bashing along we come to our first real decision regarding paths. We can go left (cookie and exit and a not hugely obvious path) or right up the giant scaffold. Most new groups I've seen go right. Fight your way up the stairs, and once again we have a patrolling, very different looking, boss mob at the top that we can see from miles away (who apparently suffers from the ongoing pandemic of boss-blindness-syndrome. Donate today, your 2$ could save a boss's eyesight.) The space we have to fight the captain + 2 adds is enormous, and this is helpful as some groups might not have a tank used to tanking more than one mob, or the cc to lock down 2. It also has a very well designed set of "pathing mistake prone" areas where you can run (as a player) and have the mob run a long way to get to you. This is good for newbies, as it adds some survivability to their instinctive "run away it's crushing me" behavior.

After you deal with the captain, you see...wait a moment, telephone...He says it's a door.

Behind the door? Van Cleef - standing ominously inside his little hut atop the boat inside the cave. Yes, folks, the first (of many) what the heck is he doing here instead of vacationing in California moments. Van cleef rolls elements from each of the previous fights together. He has multiple adds, he has an emote tied to special abilities. You kill him, (completing a quest) and he even drops a letter quest that explicitly tells you where to go for the next dungeon.

Looking around from the top of the boat? Why, there's a cave over there, with a plank leading to it. Guess that's our way out. (Shockingly it is.) You can even see murky, er, cookie <ship's cook> from here. I suppose we'll have to kill the murloc (since we kill every murloc on principle ever since they ate our toes at level 9).

You exit the dungeon from a different entrance - neatly avoiding having to fight all the various entrance stuff that has surely re-spawned since you "beat" it. You've come out with some items, completed some quests and picked up others. Even with a great story to tell about the ninja pirate murlocs, or was it a cow?

"I can't remember..." (even though you do, every moment of it)
"it was awesome." (Yes it was)

** End Rambling Walkthrough **

So that's the dungeon, lets look at what it does right. (There's an awful lot and I won't get it all by any means, but here's a quick *counts* 8 items that all stand out).

The instance is obvious....As a secret hideout, it's as subtle as the ritz - everything but flashing lights to tell you "Hey look at me!" Quests, roads, world map, giant stone with symbol beside it. You name it, there's a lot of ways to find it.

The instance is linear once you enter the instance - there's very little chance of "getting lost" and stumbling around wishing you'd brought graph paper.

The mob progression inside the instance is very much 2 steps forward, one step back. It's slow, and steady, without being monotonous. The mobs are distinctive looking, and easily identified at a glance. Their abilities are sensible and tie into their visual look very well.

The bosses (all 7 of them) are intuitive, they do what they look like they'll do, and they have emotes to help make them more memorable. No flying 800 pound elephants here.

Items are flat out better than many many items that you could obtain outside, which creates a real urge for old players to return.

Bosses and particularly difficult pulls are given more space. Easier pulls and the trash in general is given less space. This in turn makes the harder fights more forgiving of a mistep in character movement, allowing you to focus on the combat. The "sneak vs stab" mechanic is very much observed - if you have to kill it you are given room to, if you can sneak by you are not given so much room that it's "too easy".

The mobs are all within a tight level range, so you do not run into a wall halfway through. If you can fight the first boss, you can fight van cleef, although you might not kill him due to skill issues. He won't just crush you into oblivion though.

Lastly, the instance builds only upon it's own material. It doesn't assume you've seen everything before, and introduces them to you one at a time in memorable and bite sized chunks.

I could go on, but at my cursory glance, that seems to be a fair sampling of what makes the deadmines, in my humble opinion, the best dungeon in a mmo to date.

I firmly believe that a fair bit of the wow population's joy in dungeons can be traced directly to van cleef and his hopeless attempt to build an arc under a mountain (with ninjas). To me, this is the type of dungeon/raid blizzard should be striving to produce with every encounter. (Difficulty can change, but the core togetherness/polish of the deadmines should be there in every zone)

What do you think - is there anything else that stands out as really superb game-design that you think we could have more of in tbc?

If only I had been able to find Chester Copperpot...

I loved the Deadmines, it defined the moment in WoW alpha when I knew this was the game for the next 4 years. Very good summary of its highlights and design.

The only thing I can add is that the dungeon was a beautiful close to the Westfall chapter in the human territory questing life. "Winning" deadmines also gives the human characters a deeper sense of ownership in their race's history/events.

I think some of the instances (the Auchindoun ones in particular) don't have even 60% of the zone tie-in that the Deadmines did.

Oh, the Sentinel Hill yelling when you finished the quest story arc was a really nice touch

I'm really quite hopeful that black temple adds the same feel to shadowmoon valley - although I was surprised to find out that kael had the words instead of illidan.

Sounds like RFC and WC pale in comparison to Deadmines. I never quite got the sense of accomplishment from completing the quests in those two starting horde instances. Some of the reasons are outlined below:

Mediocre rewards (RFC)
Confusing layout (WC)
One-hit wonder faction (WC)
Easy bosses compared to trash pulls (especially in RFC, but WC is somewhat guilty as well)

With that said, the two starting horde instances does teach quite a number of things, perhaps more so than Deadmines:

Crowd control: In RFC, after the introductory single pulls, you're faced with 3 pulls of Ragefires.
Runners and "call for help" mobs: Teaches spatial awareness and the need to finish off mobs.
Environmental hazard/movement (or how I learned to lava jump): Lava in RFC, platform jumps in WC.

Shadowfang Keep, on the other hand, is deliciously awesome.

Definitely...having leveled to at least 60 on both sides, SFK is a much better analogue to Deadmines than either Ragefire or Wailing Caverns. Back when I was a hordie, I faced WC runs with extreme dread. The instance is incredibly long and very easy to get lost in. The one redeeming quality was that a couple bosses were neat to look at, particularly the enormous one at the very top. That was my first "holy crap, that's awesome!" moment in WoW. I'm not sure I had that same sense of size and awe again until my first meetings with Ragnaros and Onyxia.

SFK does many of the same things right that Deadmines does. Very atmospheric, pretty linear, an entire zone worth of lore leading up to the confrontation with Arugal. It's a shame that the first two Horde instances are so lackluster; I skipped SFK entirely on my first character because I got so turned off to instances by WC!

Edit: Punctuation

I feel that Deadmines is vastly superior to Wailing Caverns, which is unfortunate because I've been playing Horde for the last year-and-a-half.

Deadmines is solid and simple. Wailing Caverns is a long, ridiculous maze. Deadmines has an entire zone-full of lore driving it. WC has a relatively misplaced questline behind it which doesn't really go anywhere outside of "Kill these guys and get this pretty sword."

One of the biggest things for me is the length. WC seems much, much longer than Deadmines, which leads to many many many broken parties, failed runs and fake LDs. Especially since it's almost exclusively PuG'd, and very often by new players who may or may not feel like sitting around killing the same purple night elves for 3 hours.

The only flaws I find with Deadmines are the lore petering out after you kill VC and the fact that the quest rewards are so similar to VC drops (leather chest, staff).

It's odd that you say this, since pretty much every tbc instance was designed under the DM mold. Let's see:

Every tbc instance is marked by a huge landmark that literally screams out "yeah, I'm a major instance hub." Not only that, but the wings are located conveniently right next to each other, with minimal fighting required to get to any one of them (compare that to Sunken Temple). It's like DM taken to the extremes.

All tbc instances are more or less linear. You simply can't miss bosses since they're literally in your way.

True for all tbc instances. You can't look at the Bog Giants and think that they won't hurt. Beast trainers actually come with beasts. Arcanists actually use arcane. Etc.

I'd argue that the same is true for tbc in all cases, but I'm not sure what you mean by "intuitive." If that's a coded word for simple (since all DM encounters were more or less simple compared to tbc scripted encounters), then I suppose tbc has less of that.

Pretty true for five-man instances in TBC.

You can't get more obvious, in this respect, than tbc. Bosses literally stand in the center of an empty room (after you clear it), and you can almost always pull back the hard pulls.

Same is true for tbc. If you can handle the pulls at the beginning (ie Shattered Halls), you can do it for the whole instance. Same is true for bosses.

You will have to explain more about what this means. Are you talking about lore or fight mechanics?

Do you remember the first time you saw the Princess in Maraudon? I actually got a pretty good laugh out of that. I was not, in any way, expecting a 15ft, overweight, vaguely Asian, 3 faced, gassing monster.

Deadmines is great, it's probably one of my favorite instances, and this is a good write up as to everything they did right here. However I feel it's an incomplete analysis as you didn't really touch on its flaws.

1. Overtuned mobs. Specifically, the Defias Pillagers outside the instance are some of the most difficult mobs in the game, 2-3 of their fireballs can kill a same level character, before many classes have the abilities to interrupt reliably. They are positioned densely in the town outside the instance. It never fails that a new player attempts to run through that courtyard to get to the instance and is cut down in hail of pillager fire, mostly as they run out(previously unseen) from houses. The Goblin Woodcutters also have an obnoxious amount of health; but not nearly as obnoxious as the heavily armored mechanicals the Goblin Engineers summon. Worse, since the summoning is a cast, it frequently feels like a penalty that cannot be avoided.

2. Pathing Issues. For new players, the odd LOS mechanics of the boat(boats are the worst offenders of strange pathing in this game) make huge pulls of death likely. Further, the natural instinct being to run, as you mentioned, leads to players jumping on the mob-inaccessible areas, exposing the limitations of the game engine when mobs begin to evade, breaking immersion.

3. Bad itemization: http://www.wowhead.com/?item=1156 +2 agi +6 int ring
http://www.wowhead.com/?item=5195 cloth +4 str +3 int gloves

Though the loot is certainly a step up from the randomly generated greens, it should probably at least follow some semblence of logic. No cloth class needs strength, so why was that item created, other than to potentially confuse new players on what they should be looking for on gear?

Things I am on the fence about:
4. Rear Patrols - The 3 pack that spawns and slowly chases the players through the instance is an interesting idea, as it forces a greater sense of awareness and gives a sense of urgency. But it's also a rather large penalty for partial wipes, as reuiniting the group afterwards could be painful. Also, I can't say I would be a fan of this idea being reused.

5. Bosses. Well, it's worth pointing out that none of the bosses have any noticeable abilities whatsoever. They are larger trash mobs. Of course, this is the first alliance instance, so you wouldn't expect them to crank up the difficulty. But if the fights were more complicated, that might involve bosses's rooms being different designs, and I'd be willing to say some of the charming simplicity of the instance is partially due to the overall low demands on the level designer.

Anyway, good write up. The place is strikingly well polished, and it's telling that I find myself waiting for my alts to get to "deadmines range" and yet that feeling just does not exist, for say, Gnomeregan.

I'd actually argue that the Lavishly Jeweled Ring serves an excellent purpose - extreme blanket usability. Not only is it pretty much the first ring you ever set eyes on (before jewelcrafting); but 7/9 classes will get good use out of it, and even rogues and warriors will roll for it (as everyone does at this stage of the game :P). Niche itemization in an entry-level dungeon like this only serves to frustrate players early when nothing drops that they can even equip. The Gold-Flecked Gloves do the same job, in a less apparent fashion.

Nevermind that the game spends the next 50 levels stomping on this trend of itemization, but I thought it was an interesting (if incredibly short-lived) trend.

Great writeup, Deadmines is a great starter instance with only a few problems with it (the 3 pathing mobs that start at the beginning are the only issues I see with the instance).

Kudos to blizzard when they made this instance, I am sure this polished instance encourged people to continue to level.

Oh I certainly don't think that deadmines is perfect, but there is a lot that was done right there, and it seems worth identifying. Particularly with so many people commenting elsewhere that the normal "starting" instances seem to be lacking in tbc for raiding et al.

As a tangent - imagine how amazing 25 man pirate/ninja/goblin instance would be. I simply cannot wait for undermine.

Lion I can't reply to you point for point with quotes, your quote fu is greater than I am. Let me simply hit the high points:

By "Instance is obvious" I mean it's tied into the game world so well that any random person can direct you to it, and once you go there, you remember it forever. Gruul's lair? Karazhan? Rememberin which Auchindoun is which? I don't think any instance in tbc except maybe hellfire citadel (and even then the shat halls key being in smv is silly) does the same job as well as deadmines/moonbroke.

2 steps forward - gene splicer death and decays, completely random ability tacked onto an elf, nothing similiar, or any indication it's coming or even any familiarity with the graphic in any sense outside of the gorefiend quest in, you guessed it, smv (not netherstorm). There's other examples, but the nice thing about DM was that it was consistent in it's 2 steps forward 1 step back approach to new mobs - no 2 steps forward 1 step back repeat repeat ok now dance! type stuff.

Bosses being intuitive: Black Stalker tossing characters up into the air - No other mob of that sort, before or after, does anything similiar. Not intuitive. Hunter having freezing trap? Intuitive. It's stuff that's immediately grokkable that matters. Mechanaar (heroic) capacitor boss having polarity shift - intuitive. If the calculator had it - it'd be veyr much less so. I suppose the "stand on these rocks" gruul mechanic is unintuitive, whereas deterministic tossing (say everyone piles together and then you get a perfect spread) would be easier to immediately grasp although probably not easier to figure out. Romulo's "Ah ha!" daring emote - helps make him more intuitive. Prince's emote, which goes off well before you can see the infernals, is less so.

Memorable chunks means that you get lore or mechanics that build upon previous experience that you would mentally tag as relevant to that zone and the sizing of the "change" is small enough/coherent enough that you will remember it. As an example - think about all that goes on during maulgar. There's quite a bit - so much so that it would probably be nearly impossible to take it all in at once - but it's divided very neatly into sub-components, and each portion is succinctly describable in terms of stuff you've already seen both of which make it easier to learn. Of particular note is the realization that you don't have, for instance, an ogre genie that is an entirely new kettle of ogredom. The fight was deemed sufficiently complex that they reused familiar ogre types (seer, mage, etc) that we'd all have a good "feel" for, and that had very distinct mechanics.

I do feel that many tbc instances show signs of "revisiting the deadmines" but I also feel that signifigant polish is still missing. Some of it is probably impossible to add at this point. Say realizing that shattered halls should go _before_ blood furnace so that you do shattered halls and see "Fel orcs" being played with, then do blood furnace to find out where they come from and see magtherion then do magtherion is a more logical progression. Even so it's worth noting what was so good about previous instances.

Oddly I find that the majority of people I talk to about wow say "deadmines was awesome" or some such, but I haven't seen many discussions about the actual design decisions that made it awesome. It's simple stuff like "what's behind the door" that gets overlooked.

This is probably where they dropped the ball worst. You're doing huge zones full of quests for leveling, and putting instance hubs in each of them, and yet the quests you're grinding generally do NOT lead you in any exciting fashion to the instance hub of doom, like the smooth Westfall->Deadmines quest progression.

This progression is largely absent. Zangarmarsh -> Coilfang? Let's see, we have "Bring Me A Shrubbery," and some night elf chick sitting outside the instance offering a hat in exchange for finding her friends. Lady Vashj is one hell of a lore baddy but the only questline to kill her is given by a wandering child in CoT for keying purposes.

Terokkar has an amazing introduction with the mana bomb questline. Auchindoun is central to the entire Bone Wastes, and there is a decent questline leading up to the Crypts. Mana-Tombs is completely unrelated and unexpected, as is Shadow Labyrinth. The latter is extremely disappointing as the Shadow Council is everywhere and the lore behind them gargantuan.

Hellfire Citadel is probably the best-integrated of the zones, being able to look down upon Magtheridon in Blood Furnace is a great touch, and you're doing battle with the orcs for a large part of the zone.

I think overall Blizzard consciously chose to dump the Westfall style "long lore-heavy questlines leading into instance" progression in favour of a "pick up and play" grab-it-at-the-zone-in model. This is largely a disappointment as the real times I feel compelled to play are when a quest line reaches out and grabs you, like the Defias Brotherhood did, and I found the mana bomb Terokkar questline equally compelling; a sense of urgency made doing this questline seem extremely important.

The next expansion being on the sea, with ship battles, pirates, juggernauts, and under water adventures, would be a huge success.

You left out the murlocs

Edit: I want to see some pirate murlocs with eye patches and the murloc version of Arrr

Even the lead-up to the HFC instances seem lacking by Deadmines standards. Ok, so you go around killing fel orcs, gain a couple of levels, and then you get the kill the bosses quest for Ramparts. There exists no substantial introduction to any of the bosses. For example, why is Omor in Ramparts?

Don't forget that a decrease in pirate population has been correlated with an increase in global temperatures. You don't want to have to move to Outland, do you?

While I don't particularly care for Deadmines (or Westfall, for that matter) myself, VC's story and the quests that surround it tie into the zone very nicely and do give you a sense of accomplishment when you complete the storyline. Which is definitely missing from most of the TBC instances (save Hellfire Citadel and possibly Tempest Keep). For example, how was Auchidon destroyed? When was it destroyed? What was it prior to destruction? I've done all the quests in Terokkar and for what would seem to be a major event that had very big repercussions (and has 3 dungeons tied into it), it's barely talked about and only referred to obliquely (all I've gathered is that Shadow Council types blew a Draenei city up). Reminds me a bit of AQ20/40 in that respect.

I agree with you for the most part, Anias. It is true that there are some trash mobs that have some "unintuitive" abilities, but there are also heaps of trash that have very very intuitive mechanics. Going through tbc 5 mans the first time, my group and I had a few very solid rules of thumb so to speak when it came to predicting mob abilities.

For example, you can predict with almost 95 certainty that any mob with a "healer, mender, oracle etc." tag was going to heal. Most warrior-type mobs with a 2hander used mortal strike. If a mob is dual-wielding, you can predict they were going to do very fast damage, and probably gouge or stun if they "looked like a rogue." Shattered Halls Assasin? Sharpshooter? Dark Weaver? Anyone that's made it that far in the game should be able to pick up on those abilities rather quickly. I might go so far as to say that tbc -improved- on the easily recognizable trash mob abilties since most mobs mirror a player class in most cases. Not to mention the fact that each 5man has copies of the mobs outside of it on the inside (CoT may be the exception for obvious reasons =P).

We'd go through this process when encountering any new trash or even a boss ("That ogre has two heads, it's going to cast spells of some sort. And hes holding a two hander, he'll probably charge or something"). Overall tho, bosses should be considered seperately from trash when it comes to predicting a strat. Bosses should have new, special, and unintuitive abilities because they are "named" mobs of some significance. Again, previous instance experience (even raid experience) puts you ahead of the curve so to speak, but I don't think it's entiriely hard.

About the lore, you are spot on there (although after doing a lot of quest chains like cipher of damnation etc the lore ties itself together kind of, hopefully it all comes together at the Black Temple). The only instance that really comes close to deadmines as far as storyline goes is Hellfire Citadel and the imprisonment of Magtheridon. I have to say that once I did BF for the first time I was ready to go bring that bastage down. This brings me to another small tangent: Being that Mag is inside of the very first TBC 5-man hub (you can see him from a level 62 dungeon!), the intuitive thing to assume would be "ah, this must be the first 25 man we should try, no attunement, hes right here in HP, i've never even seen reference to another one." Anyone who follows that though will be in for a real treat =P

EDIT: And any Engineer-type mob WILL throw bombs, whether its an orc, a naga, or w/e, there will be explosives involved.

Anias, I think one thing you have to take into account for why people think that DM was awesome is also that it's the first instance most people ever did. We tend to remember our first experiences - which is the reason I find none of the WoW instances particularly memorable compared to the old EQ dungeons, with which I "grew up," so to speak.

Of course, there are certain aspects of DM that make it alot *more* memorable than, say, RFC and Wailing Caverns - which are the equivalent introductory instances for the Horde. You did hit on many of these points reasonably well, but my point, I suppose, was that many TBC instances demonstrate the same sort of design and are not nearly as memorable simply because you are pretty jaded at this point. Yes, you can argue that the TBC instances are not as polished, but frankly I don't think that's the case. Many of the TBC instances are very well designed, demonstrate alot of creativity, and follow closely the sort of DM-esque mechanics that you outline. Take Shattered Halls, for example, or Shadow Labs. You can't really make an argument, I think, that these instances are somehow worse than Deadmines, at least on the mechanics side.

I'm far more willing, consequently, to ascribe DM's success to the notion that 1) instances feel crappier today simply because you've gotten used to them and 2) pirates & rogues have an inherent "cool" factor that resonates with your existing cultural expectations. That and the fact that the level 70 instances are simply more punishing, whereas back in the teens and twenties you could put together complete pugs and weird class combinations and still do reasonably well.